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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2001 Week 9 Hansard (22 August) . . Page.. 3135 ..

MS TUCKER (continuing):

This is obviously about consultation and involving stakeholders and people with expertise in this particular debate. I continue:

Focus on the citizens' desired future vision for the community and on their perceived top priorities.

Relate performance measurement initiatives clearly to key public needs, as expressed in surveys and as fleshed out in focus groups.

Then we have another really important point that is made in a paper by Winston, Rogers and Hough, entitled Give me a performance system that works. Ways to maximise the use of indicators are discussed. One useful method is a framework called:

Performance data + performance questions = performance information.

This framework highlights the difference between performance indicators and performance information. It makes the point that performance indicators are a means to an end-not an end in themselves.

Then, finally, the ACT community criteria model, which was in the "More than the sum of its parts: document:

incorporates the values expressed by members of the project's community focus groups and citizen research conducted by the ACT government.

At the core of the model is the question concerning the service objective: what is the service supposed to do? This is the fundamental question when assessing performance. Radiating from the core are the four key questions that members of the community most commonly want to know about a service, and they are as follows:

Does the service do what it is supposed to do?

That is the question for this tender document. I continue:

What is it like to use?

What is it like for the kids? I continue:

What does it cost?

It is obvious what that is about. I continue:

Does it do what it is not supposed to do?

That is a very important question in the context of this debate, which I will go on to explain now.

This tender document also does not fit with the government's own purchasing policy. The following is a quote from a purchasing policy discussion paper, from the Chief Minister's Department:

For quality issues to be considered in the tender selection process they need first to have been included in the tender specifications.

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